Night hunting on Saba Land crabs, a traditional hobby and business By Suzanne Nielsen SABA The so-called thrill of the hunt is definitely heightened by the fact that we were looking for land crabs in the dark. It was pitch black. I could only make out my hunterguide Cisco Mathew by the flash of his large white plastic catch bag, caught in the reflection of his headlamp and flashlight. A land crab tries to hide in one of Saba s rock walls. Normally they live in burrows in the underbrush. The collection bags are recycled, sturdy plastic feedbags. I occasionally played bag lady as we hunted on either side of The Road from the Over the Peak area up to the Crispeen GEBE building and down along Dancing Place Trail. Other than enthusiasm, I did not add much to the hunt. One of the critters got away from me as I held the bag open for Cisco to drop in a crab. Quicker than the crab, he managed to snag it before it got clear to Windwardside.
It s true what they say about Caribbean crabs in a bucket they scramble over one another to get out! This night s catch will be transferred to the crab crib. An export product It was amazing to watch this tall and nimble Saban disappear over a vertical wall of some 15 feet to scurry around in the dry leaves below to find his prey, Gecarcinus ruricola. The best time to hunt is after rain and at the dark moon phase.
Night hunting with flashlight, headlamp, bag, and a quick hand. The main danger, if there is one, is falling in the dark on Saba s uncertain terrain with loose, wet, and slippery undergrowth. The critters also have a very strong bite, and careful handling is good advice. If it does hang on, Cisco advised, put the crab down and it will immediately let go to scurry away. The safest handhold is across the carapace.
This is the right way to pick up the crab to avoid being bitten. Chef Will Caines from Lollipop s Restaurant used to serve land crab in the shell fairly regularly with some success. His secret recipe was popular enough that tourists would ask him to freeze up a number of his special crab dishes for transport back to the USA. (This would have been in the days before tougher airline baggage security regulations!) Cisco is joined by a handful of other Saba hunters, including teenagers who start their college fund this way and enjoy a different night out with the boys. Arindell Ra Hassell of Windwardside, no longer hunts, but is a middleman. He has three large wooden boxes at his home that he uses to keep the catches brought to him. Some crab men must have their favourite areas, but Ra said it is hard to tell one night there are 30, the next time 50, in the same spot. What attracts them? They have their own system, was Ra s opinion.
Cisco Mathew has just fed last night s catch, which is kept in the pen behind him. Without the lid, the crabs, who easily crawl up trees and walls, would escape in a flash. Ra s responsibility is to keep the crabs healthy until he transports them to his St. Maarten clients. He must have had over 300 crabs the day I visited him. These are very rude beasts, of course, and scramble madly to get out of the crate when he opens the lid. The majority of the animals are purplish-brown in colour, but there are whitish-gray, yellow, black, and hues in between. Of course the animals must be fed until it is time for them to be shipped to market other wise they will just eat each other! Both Ra and Cisco said that coconuts, fruit, even left over kitchen scraps--and water of course--satisfy the crabs and they have very little loss.
Ra Hassell has to move fast to keep his crabs inside the pen as they make their bid for freedom. Current crab men all recalled the late King of Crabs Richard Whiskey Simmons, who was so proficient at the job that he paid to airlift his crabs to his St. Maarten clients. Simmons would go out every night and fill half a dozen bags, which he tied and left roadside for pick up when he was finished for the night. Today s crab men tend to use local fishermen or the Dawn II ferry to get their catch to market. A Long Tradition Cisco knows the crab s habitats, what time of month and year gives the best harvest, and so forth, but he might not realize that he is carrying on the legacy of a pre-historic activity. The archaeologists of Leiden University found the remains of Gecarcinus ruricola in their investigations of middens (refuse) dumps of the Amerindians who first inhabited the island. Middens are very valuable in showing some of what prehistoric island dwellers ate. The bony leftovers also tell archaeologists what species were on the island before Columbus and even before Christ! The 2001-2002 excavations at Plum Piece, Saba s most ancient inhabited area at over 3,000 years old, proved that the modest land crab was on the dinner plate even then. Crab exoskeletons (more numerous than bird or fish bones) dominated the remains found on the location, said expedition leaders Leiden University archaeologists Corinne Hofman and Menno Hoogland.
Leiden University students working over a 3,000-year old midden collection with crab remains during a 2001 dig at Plum Piece. Today s midden for Saba land crab is the trash barrel behind a restaurant in Marigot, on the French side. The crab is not eaten on Saba any more, and local old timers said that it was not often on the family dinner menu in their memories. Fishermen used to catch crabs to use as bait. Today, crab appears to be solely an export product. More about Gecarcinus ruricola Gecarcinus ruricola has pincers of about equal size, which makes it heterochelic, if you wondered. Since they use both claws equally, are very fast moving, and can be quite large, they pack a punch if they hold on to your finger. It is easy to distinguish male from female from the underside of the animal. The species was identified and named in 1758 by the father of the scientific binomial naming convention, Carl Linnaeus, who observed, Every year an army marches out of the forests towards the sea. This species of crab, like all crabs, drops its fertilized eggs, which are external at this point, in seawater by washing them off. The eggs develop as part of the general plankton. This mass migration to the sea takes place in August/September. It is easy to find road kill pictures from Florida, for example, where seacoast roads post Crab Crossing warning signs. However, I could not unearth a story that Saba s land crabs have one customary path to the sea. Yet the crabs must make the amazing trek from The Road down the almost 1,300 feet to sea level once a year, which would make counting at least the female population pretty easy. By the way, she is carrying about 85,000 eggs with her, but only a small portion will ever survive their plankton stage to experience their own migration.
Eco Impact This crab species is found all over the Caribbean and has different local names. It reaches maturity after five years and may live for only another five. They keep out of the sun during the day to conserve moisture and forage out from their burrows during the night. They play an important role as recyclers of forest detritus. They also recycle nutrients, oxygenate the soil with their burrows, and manage forest growth by feeding on seeds and seedlings. Some varieties of land crabs are being studied in the Indian Ocean to see whether they can be used as an indicator species, that is a species whose abundance indicates positive environmental health. Enthusiastic nature lovers were once worried that Saba s land crab population was being depleted by over harvesting. Michael Hassell, Head of the Saba Agricultural Department, said that a study was to be undertaken by Carmabi Foundation of Curaçao in the late 1980s, but he had never received the study results. A notion was also floated that land crab farms might be organized into a business opportunity. With no tracking of crab populations over time, it is difficult to calculate crab numbers and possible fluctuations. The crab men I spoke to have not noticed a decline in the number they are able to catch. However, a truck driver said that he sees fewer on Saba s main island road, which he crosses many times during the day and past dusk. The money earned is interesting, but the sport as currently practiced is not attractive to many as an ongoing enterprise. In its present state, it could hardly be considered as a growth export industry on Saba. Over development might sooner reduce the number of land crabs by replacing their habitat with concrete. There is currently a lot of building on Saba, and it s not crab burrows.